Steve Savage

About Steve Savage

A childhood interest in wildlife that became his profession, Steve Savage is a Biologist, Environmental Educator and Wildlife Author with over 30 years experience. Steve specialises in freshwater and marine ecology and has published 44 books on wildlife for children and has also written many articles for magazines and journals. He has worked with school children on various sites around Sussex and also works with schools helping them to develop their school grounds to help wildlife, enhance teaching and as places for wellbeing. Steve runs his own environmental education programme, but also works with other organisations including the Railway land Nature Reserve and has a good knowledge of the habitats and wildlife on this site. He has a great passion for cross curriculum teaching especially linking science and literacy.

Well done to Punnetts Town for sending in their observations of some fascinating behaviour of pond snails gliding around on the front of the underwater camera on pond cam and also a great close up of a stickleback. (screen shot left) Other observations from Punnetts Town included more stickleback observations in the same pond and also mallard ducks [...]

During the school visit pond dipping sessions two schools accidentally caught fish eggs. Adult fish, such as Rudd, often lay their eggs in a clump which sticks to a rock or similar object. It looks like a few fish thought that the wooden structure beneath the pond dipping platform was a safe place to lay [...]

There are many types of flying insects that lay their eggs in ponds and other freshwater habitats. These include mosquitos, gnats and non-biting midges. The eggs hatch and develop into free swimming, some of which we discovered during our pond dipping sessions. In fact one midge larva actually became a flying adult in one of [...]

The beautiful and spectacular dragonflies and damselflies that add a splash of colour to our ponds and ditches in the summer spend most of their lives underwater as a dull brown or greenish nymphs (larva). Why do you think that the nymphs are such a dull colour? We have many damselfly nymphs during the RLL [...]

Two species of warbler return to the heart of reeds each year, the reed warbler and the white throat. REED WARBLER The reed warblers have now returned in the Heart of Reeds where they will nest. Their arrival on the reserve follows a long migration as the warblers fly to the UK from their winter [...]

Starting in the spring, small blobs of jelly appear on the underside of many of the pond plants. These are the small egg masses of pond snails and a careful examination under a microscope may reveal the tiny snail embryos. The eggs hatch within a few days and tiny snails with almost transparent [...]

We have been seeing some very interesting views of sticklebacks through pond cam and Heart of Reeds cam. Sticklebacks are very hardy little fish that are often found in ponds and ditches. There are two different types on the reserve, three-spined stickleback and the less common ten-spined stickle back. The three-spined stickleback is the most common species [...]

Pond cam has being providing views of how rich the life is in the woodland pond. Some of the pond life is quite large, such as the fish and the newts. But some of it is very tiny, too small to see in detail but you can see lots of tiny creatures swimming in front of [...]

Last Friday, after Robsac School's pond dipping session, we found a small pond animal swimming around in the container which was pointed out by one of the children. We had already chosen the 10 pond creatures for the broadcast so it was not mentioned. However this fascinating pond creature is called Argulus also known as a fish louse. [...]

In the autumn last year, adult common eels migrated down the river Ouse and other Sussex rivers to the sea. Their return to the sea was the first stage of a very long migration when thousands of common eels swim to the Sargasso Sea where they are believed to breed. The adult eels live in [...]